Here’s Reading in 2020
Against the odds, I ended up reading 52 books this year as well! Don’t know if this will continue, but two years in a row is a pretty good streak.
The list last year was dominated by SciFi and Fantasy, with a few other categories. I did think of broadening my scope at the beginning of this year, but honestly, the distribution just hapenned. Here’s the break up:
- Poetry: 6
- SciFi: 14, Fantasy: 3
- Fiction: 5
- Biography: 5, Non-Fiction: 4
- Science: 3, Thinking: 3, Maths: 4, Geography: 5
Where available, the picture links to my notes on each book.
Funnily enough, I read enough books to have Geography as a separate category, and Nick Middleton was the most-read author (well, exclucing SciFi & Fantasy). I first came across his writing in an article in the Financial Times (A Geographer’s Notebook) that I kept as an example of great writing. And I seem to have become a fan of OUP’s Very Short Introductions.
No Economics books this year – oh no!!
Two books stood out this year: ‘The WIERDest people in the World’ and ‘Devotions’. The best fiction book (in a long time) was ‘The Anomaly’. Two of these were picked from mentions on Marginal Revolutions.
Poetry
Three collections and three from individual poets.
SciFi
The Expanse series is, to put it mildly, incredible. The character development is great, and though the setting is futuristic, the motivations and crises are all too human.
I don’t know why I’m reading LeGuin this late! At any rate, though the category is SciFi, this is literature at its very best!
Fantasy
The Stormlight Archive started out with a bang; the first book is the standard ‘hero’s journey’ told twice, and very well written. However, as the series progressed, I found the storytelling and the imagined worlds to get slacker and sloppier, and finally gave up after the third book. A pity, since there are sections that are among the best that I’ve read, but getting to these was too much of a slog
Fiction
What a wonderful set of books to have read this year!
Biography
Non-Fiction
Science
Thinking
Maths
Geography
An accidental category!